This last year has been very odd, as it has been for everyone. Luckily all our extended family and friends are still with us, even the oldest and frailest. We have continued working throughout as one of us works from home anyway and the other is in a hardware shop, which counts as essential.
We are still trying to declutter and simplify our house but of course with no charity shops open, where do we put the stuff we want to get rid of? We have a clothes bank in our village which is usually overflowing, so we check it out every time we go past and if it has been empty we rush down with a couple of bags! I have turned a lot of old tea towels and towels into rags, have a box of books and a box of kitchen stuff ready to go to the charity shops once they are open and have given away quite a lot to friends and family.
I have discovered some new Youtubers on minimalism, such as;
The Wistl Family adventures I like as she is also British and very down to earth. I have watched the Minimal Mom and the minimalists as well. It is always nice to find other Brits as a lot of the things the US Youtubers and bloggers talk about are just not applicable to the UK and they tend to have huge house, with extras like laundry rooms! I am in a normal UK semi-detached 3 bedroom house which used to be a council house and was built in 1949, with only one previous owner. It is very well built but as it was built after the war when there was a shortage of wood, the roof is not as solid as pre-war houses. The rafters are shorter and the ends slope down so your outside upstairs walls have a little slope at the top. There are lots of these houses all over Britain. I quite like it.
I have done some decorating this year, spent a lot of time with my kids (one on furlough, one home from uni and one teenager who is home educated anyway). I also now have my first grandchild, so lots of support has been needed for exhausted new parents! My daughter is planning to home educate her son, so we have been talking educational philosophy a lot too.
I have planted a small pear tree, have my broad beans in already and am checking my seed stash to see what I need to buy. A new season in the garden is about to begin and I have been trying to shake off the lockdown lethargy to get going with the spring cleaning and garden jobs.
Once March starts it is birthday season and planting madly and I feel like everything kicks off for spring. All the best for a better 2021 to everyone!
Our Simple Life 